'Patriot' Hacker Forces School-Massacre Twitter Feed Offline

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On Friday (Dec. 14), the shadowy "patriot hacker" was
instrumental in taking down a Twitter account that mocked the
victims of that morning's Newtown, Conn.,
elementary school massacre.

The account, at @z0bm13d, used a news photo of a bloodied, crying
child as its wallpaper, and a photo of a little boy wearing
bloody zombie makeup as its icon. Its displayed name was "Sandy
Hook Victim."

"I now have more holes that my daddy can [have sex with]," the
account posted. "I forgive Ryan Lanza for what he did to me."

(Ryan Lanza of Hoboken, N.J., was erroneously named by several
news outlets Friday as the Newtown shooter. The killer was
actually his younger brother, Adam Lanza, who appeared to have
been carrying identification naming him as Ryan Lanza.)

It's not clear how quickly the alarm was raised, but on Friday
evening a Twitter account at @GonzoPhD
posted, "I never do this so listen to me this one time —
report this sick piece of [garbage] .@z0mb13d for parodying
today's shootings."

But it seemed the Jester, who has managed to keep his own
identity secret, wasn't willing to wait for Twitter to take
action.

"Only hope is a very clever SE [ social
engineering ] attack," he tweeted. "@z0mb13d I have a very
particular set of skills acquired over a long career. Skills that
make me a nightmare for people like u."

(Twitter refused to comment for this story. The Jester did not
respond to a request for comment.)

First, the Jester said, he looked at @z0mb13d's followers and
quickly correlated them to a similarly named group in the Steam
online-gaming community.

"Guy behind this despicable account >@z0mb13d is part of
'zomb13' gaming crew on steam, look at his followers, then look
at steam," the Jester wrote. "How long b4 one of ur 'buddies'
rats u out as pressure mounts?"

Within a couple of hours, the Jester dug up and posted a partial
telephone number belonging to a friend of the @z0mb13d account
owner.

Around the same time one of @z0mb13d's first followers, whose
account bore the same handle as a member of the gaming crew,
closed his Twitter account.

An hour later, the Jester had linked the offensive account to an
Indiana college student who worked at Dairy Queen and liked the
horror-rap group Insane Clown Posse — and @z0mb13d had been
suspended by Twitter.

Just as soon as that small victory was achieved, however, another
threat to online decency presented itself.